Darwin was not afraid to look deeply into the void. His bold view can be seen as either noble and pessimistic or noble and admirable.
PRIMO LEVIFor me chemistry represented an indefinite cloud of future potentialities which enveloped my life to come in black volutes torn by fiery flashes, like those which had hidden Mount Sinai. Like Moses, from that cloud I expected my law.
More Primo Levi Quotes
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What a very few are acquiring in knowledge of the physical world will perhaps cause this period not to be judged as a pure return of barbarism.
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I live in my house as I live inside my skin: I know more beautiful, more ample, more sturdy and more picturesque skins: but it would seem to me unnatural to exchange them for mine.
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The obstacles preventing the realization of both these extreme states are of the same nature: they derive from our human condition which is opposed to everything infinite.
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In history and in life one sometimes seems to glimpse a ferocious law which states: to he that has, will be given; from he that has not, will be taken away.
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After the planet becomes theirs, many millions of years will have to pass before a beetle particularly loved by God, at the end of its calculations will find written on a sheet of paper in letters of fire that energy is equal to the mass multiplied by the square of the velocity of light.
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My number is 174517; we have been baptized, we will carry the tattoo on our left arm until we die.
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Perfection belongs to narrated events, not to those we live.
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Human memory is a marvelous but fallacious instrument.
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We collected in a group in front of their door, and we experienced within ourselves a grief that was new for us, the ancient grief of the people that has no land, the grief without hope of the exodus which is renewed in every century.
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Perhaps Kafka laughed when he told stories [. . . ] because one isn’t always equal to oneself.
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To accuse another of having weak kidneys, lungs, or heart, is not a crime; on the contrary, saying he has a weak brain is a crime.
PRIMO LEVI -
Anyone who has obeyed nature by transmitting a piece of gossip experiences the explosive relief that accompanies the satisfying of a primary need.
PRIMO LEVI -
To destroy a man is difficult, almost as difficult as to create one: it has not been easy, nor quick, but you Germans have succeeded. Here we are, docile under your gaze; from our side you have nothing more to fear; no acts of violence, no words of defiance, not even a look of judgment.
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It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say. It can happen, and it can happen everywhere.
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He could hardly read or write but his heart spoke the language of the good
PRIMO LEVI